Trump is ‘haunted’ by this little-known law that lets judges shoot him down

12 February

An obscure 1946 federal law is helping lawyers challenge Trump’s power grabs. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) has been referenced in lawsuits challenging a federal aid freeze and the dismissal of federal employees, NBC News reported Wednesday.

As judges preside over a flurry of lawsuits challenging Trump’s latest actions, the law lets them discard federal agency actions that they find “arbitrary and capricious.” One example of this would be if agencies cannot explain why they are changing their policy.

"What we're seeing from the Trump administration is they are moving so fast, and they're trying to do so much with so little reasoning, and they're trying to disrupt as much as possible, as fast as possible, that these actions are inherently arbitrary and capricious" under the APA, a lawyer involved in one of the lawsuits told NBC News.

“These unlawful injunctions are a continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

A court decision about Trump’s freeze of federal aid spending included a claim based on the APA. The litigation continues, but the administration withdrew the memo.

One lawsuit that references the APA comes from workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) seeking to stop staff members from being put on leave. Last week, a judge partially granted their request.

“The dissolution of USAID is arbitrary and capricious in multiple respects,” their lawyers argued.

This is not the first time Trump has encountered this law. NBC News’ Lawrence Hurley noted that the law "haunted Trump during his first term."

During the first Trump administration, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cited the act when the court decided the White House was not straightforward as to why they wanted to add a citizenship question to the census.

"Reasoned decision-making under the Administrative Procedure Act calls for an explanation for agency action. What was provided here was more of a distraction," Roberts wrote at the time.

In this instance and another regarding an attempt to undo Obama-era immigration policy, Trump administration officials "were sloppy, and the court did not like that," Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, told NBC News.

Click here to read NBC's full report.

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